Tag: films

B Movie Glory: The Librarians aka Strike Force

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Exterior, Miami Beach. A hardened mercenary (everyone’s favourite tough guy, William Forsythe) has just returned the kidnaped daughter of a businessman, and the guy says “I don’t even know what to call you guys.” Forsythe’s Simon replies “Just call us the Librarians… lets just say we return overdue books”, with a straighter face than David Caruso’s Horatio Cain on CSI, another ludicrous Miami tough guy. Anyways, that’s the kind of knowingly asinine B Movie Glory (trademarked at this point) that we have here, but it’s a good bit of fun, to quote a certain Tarantino character. Forsythe’s off the books squad deals in locating the victims of human trafficking, and bringing the pain to those who perpetrate it. He’s joined by Prison Break’s Amaury Nolasco, martial arts star Daniel Bernhardt and former playboy bunny turned B movie maiden Erika Eleniak. Their next task: rescue the kidnaped daughter of a mysterious billionaire (Michael Parks Skypes in a cameo that contains more gravity than the rest of the film combined, not to mention more than it deserves) from the clutches of a slimy crime lord (Andrew Divoff in full villain mode). It’s routine and predictable, punctuated by off the wall one liners, porno lit sex scenes, low grade gunfight last and sloppy hand to hand combat. I still can’t get over that aforementioned snippet of dialogue though, it sums up what glorious little gems like this are all about, encapsulates the B action film and Forsythe delivers it with that knowing little smirk that’s says it all. Watch for familiar faces like Ed Lauter, Forsythe’s own daughter Rebecca, Christopher Atkins and more. Oh yeah, and Burt Reynolds shows up briefly as a shady character credited (he actually had his name removed from the roster, understandably) as ‘Irish’. His first and middle names could be ‘Not’ and ‘Actually’, because the brogue he uses here is worse than Tommy Lee Jones I’m Blown Away and Dennis Hopper in Ticker combined, it’s a perplexing, cringy cameo. Hilarious stuff.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Captured

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

In a home invasion scenario, where do the lines between stalker and victim get blurred? For cat burglar Robert Breed (Andrew ‘Wishmaster’ Divoff) and hotheaded real estate tycoon Holden Downs (the great Canadian character actor Nick Mancuso), this question leads to a nocturnal game of cat and mouse when the former makes the ill fated decision to bust into the latter’s garage one night and pilfer an expensive automobile. Little does the intruder know, but Downs is a bit of an unhinged basket case and, after several other break ins, has equipped his ride with a self locking, impenetrable steel cage that basically turns it into a prison for whoever is locked inside. This puts both men in an odd position as Downs hold Breed captive inside his car, torments him and projects every little frustration of his own life onto the guy until tempers are high. It’s a somewhat silly concept given the Panic Room style chamber piece treatment, but it’s the two actors who really sell it with their frenzied intensity, particularly serial scene stealer Mancuso who goes for broke with his angry Joker-esque mannerisms. This is blatantly low budget and super rough around the seams, but a serviceable thriller nonetheless, with excellent work from the two actors who make good use of the high concept setup.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Walled In

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Walled In isn’t scary enough to be memorable or original enough to leave a lasting impression, it’s just one of those drab, grey, middle of the road horror flicks that comes and goes as quickly and unceremoniously as a sudden breeze through the room. The only notable reason for it existing beyond background noise is the presence of a few cool actors. Mischa Barton headlines, and despite her teen star shtick I’ve always thought that she’s a really good, engaging actress. Supporting her are Vancouver’s own Deborah Kara Unger and Cameron Bright, who always add class to any venture. Their trio of involvement made it worthwhile for me, but the story and production overall is just a hazy blur. Barton plays an agent for a demolition company who is overseeing the removal of a particularly old building, with some freaky secrets laid into the foundation. Unger is the building’s super creepy caretaker who knows what’s up but ain’t snitching to anyone, while Bright is even less helpful as her weird son. It turns out there’s hidden tombs in the walls where the long dead victims of a mysterious killer were shut in, and even years later the murderer may still be lurking about the place, which should have put Barton in the hot seat for some potentially suspenseful scenes, but alas, it’s a sleepy slog the whole way through. The thing would have been more lively as a video game or something, anything more stimulating than the cable level lack of thrills and chills doled out here. Barton was good, as she always is, but other than her, Unger and Bright, this is just mud.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Tough Luck

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Tough Luck is one of long forgotten low budget crime drama mystery flicks that always contain the same key elements: a seductive femme fatale, a young drifter caught up in sensual intrigue, the jealous older husband/lover, all gilded by lies and the vague threat of violence, which is always inevitable. The loner here is Norman Reedus as a young grifter who comes across a travelling circus run by gypsy Armand Assante and his darkly angelic wife (the stunning Dagmara Dominczyck). He gets close to the two of them, too close to her and eventually the kind of sparks fly that often result in danger and deceit. Reedus made this same movie years prior, except it was called Dark Harbour, was set in the Pacific Northwest instead of the Oklahoma dust bowl and he starred alongside Polly Walker and Alan Rickman instead. That goes to show that the traditions and tropes of this sub-genre are as old and intrinsic as the routines in the circus Assante owns here. There’s a shifty quality to all three leads here, all seemingly unlikeable until the mournful third act plays out and we see which one really deserves our sympathy. Reedus always looks like a scrappy lost dog that’s seen a few back alley fights, he has the kind of natural magnetic charisma that you can’t fake. Assante is sometimes a long of ham in his work, but seems a bit more relaxed here and let’s the circus monkey on his shoulder do some of the talking. Dagmara is a true beauty, captivating the screen and making us really believe we’d fall under her dark spell while we’re hypnotized. Not a bad flick at all, and has some really good moments in the final act which gets quite grounded, sad and has a neat little twist.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Breaking Point

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

There’s some debate on whether rappers are decent actors. Some think they have no place in a business that requires training and practice. Other are more accepting. I’m somewhere in the middle, but Breaking Point (aka Order Of Redemption) makes a pretty good case for them, particularly Busta Rhymes and Kirk ‘Sticky Fingaz’ Jones, who star in this urban crime/courtroom drama alongside genre veterans Tom Berenger and Armand Assante. This is a very solid flick by direct to DVD standards, one that actually says something about the state of the streets, poverty, evil, corruption and second chances. Berenger plays a once mighty defense attorney who has fallen a long way following family tragedy and drug addiction. He’s brought back onto the scene when an ex athlete turned gang member (Fingaz) is embroiled in a complex murder case involving an infant and the vicious, psychopathic crime boss played by Busta Rhymes. Igniting matters further is a hothead rival attorney (Armand Assante in full sleaze mode) who has it in for Berenger. He and Fingaz make a strong alliance and both try to find some light at the end of a very dark tunnel by saving the baby from Rhymes, smoking out corruption in both the police force and the DA’s office with the help of a friend on the inside (the always lovely and vastly underrated Musetta Vander) and get their lives back on track in the process. Berenger is brilliant as the fallen avenger trying to burn bright again, while Rhymes does a chilling variation on the cold hearted killer archetype with his own angry twist. This may be low budget and not very prolific, but they say that all you need for a good film is a good script, and this has an excellent one that’s brought to life vividly by everyone involved for a bristling, provocative, emotional crime drama.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: American Strays

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

There’s a turn of phrase that I like to avoid in where a writer compares any eclectic crime film they can find to the work of Quentin Tarantino by labelling it a ‘Tarantino knockoff’, or any variation in vocabulary. I renounce this lazy, unimaginative jab as it’s based in the worst form of criticism, that of negative comparison and ignorance of a film’s original qualities. However, in the case of American Strays, even I have to concede that it’s a blatant, unapologetic ripoff of QT’s style that makes no efforts to mask the plagiarism or do it’s own thing. He should sue. Not to mention the fact that on it’s own terms it’s just a horrible, boring, awkward fuckin piece of shit movie. It’s set up in the same anthology sequence except none of them are even connected, let alone make sense. Two nimrod hit men (James Russo and Joe Viterelli) drive through the desert engaging in strained extended dialogue that’s neither funny nor stimulating. A psychotic vacuum salesman (the great John Savage) goes door to door harassing people until he meets his match in a femme fatale housewife (Jennifer Tilly). A stressed out family man (Eric Roberts, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else) drives his dysfunctional brood through the desert. Elsewhere, Luke Perry plays a depressed, suicidal weirdo who sits around in a shack with a guy he’s paid to literally beat the shit out of him. The worst is a cutesy pie, insufferable Bonnie and Clyde style couple that are so obviously emulating Clarence and Alabama from Tarantino’s True Romance that you begin to wonder if they gave up and just set the script on autopilot like one of those knowingly ridiculous knockoffs you see on Netflix that are simply there to decoy you out into clicking a title that looks *almost* like what you want to watch (TransMorphers, anyone?). None of these vignettes are remotely engaging, it’s like a parade of shitty, awkward, misguided SNL skits from a dimension where humour and wit don’t exist. Every actor just looks tired, every line lands with a hollow thud. Just. Don’t. Bother.

B Movie Glory: D-War aka Dragon Wars

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

D-War, aka Dragon Wars if the obnoxious CGI cover art wasn’t obvious enough, is a slovenly, sorry ass piece of pseudo sci-fi wannabe Godzilla garbage that manages to take a concept ripe with silly Corman-esque potential and turn it into something so boring it will melt your frontal lobe before the ‘dragons’ even show up. Apparently based on a Korean legend, I’d be fascinated to snoop around and see just what liberties were taken with the lore, because this plays out more like a Transformers movie but if the Autobots were giant Pokémon. An investigative reporter (Jason Behr) spends most of the time staring vacuously into the horizon as he and a hot chick (Amanda Brooks) race towards LA to try and stop a race of giant monsters from destroying everything. Where did they come from? Couldn’t say, and neither could the film from what I remember. What do they want? To smash and break things. Poor Robert Forster slums it up as an old mentor to Behr who has some vague sagely knowledge about the dragons, while Twin Peaks’s Chris Mulkey plays a corrupt FBI agent with his own agenda who hunts them down. The whole thing reeks of rushed, scattered production values and the shared knowledge among cast and crew that this wasn’t ever going anywhere but straight to DVD, no matter how prolific a legend it’s based on. Blech.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Asylum

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Asylum is first rate trash, a nasty, cheap exercise in shocker horror that gives sanitariums everywhere a bad name and perpetuates the ludicrous stigma that all such institutions are the scariest, most unorganized places on earth. God bless the cheap underside of Hollywood and it’s deliberately skewed perception of things. This one sees Robert ‘T-1000’ Patrick as a private investigator who goes undercover inside a mental hospital as a patient when it becomes clear that people are going missing inside and something is up. The set, design and mood of the place is schlock to the core, without the faintest hint of realism to be found. The facility’s head doctor (the late great Henry Gibson) is a benign fool who has no idea the kind of havoc being perpetrated under his watch. The place has a special kind of crazy in a character played by Malcolm McDowell called Sullivan Rane, a lucidly maniacal serial killer who has red herring written all over him and moonlights under an obvious wig and mask as a patient known simply as ‘Doc’. It’s a hammy throwaway role, but ever intense McDowell seems to have a ball playing whatever oddball garage sale B role they give him, and ends up stealing his few scenes, as usual. Patrick plays it straight and his trademark steely reserve is an odd contrast to the knowingly silly demeanour of almost everyone else involved. The film does it’s best with a twist one can sense coming a good country mile off, but it gives one aforementioned actor some last minute juicy scenes to make his involvement worthwhile. Low rent horror and then some.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Past Midnight

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Past Midnight describes the cable time slot that disposable psycho thrillers like this are relegated to for all time, soaked in by weary, often inebriated viewers in the haunted wee hours and oft remembered as a hazy dream or recollection. This one stars the late great Natasha Richardson and Rutger Hauer, who is one of the reigning sultans of B Movies among actors out there. He plays a man who is recently released from prison for allegedly stabbing his wife to death a decade before. Natasha is the social worker who falls in love with him and gradually begins to believe that not only is he innocent, but the real killer is still lurking out there somewhere. It’s taut psycho-suspense done pretty well, and there’s certainly enough menacing atmosphere and evocative rural locations to spare. Hauer, even when playing the most saintly heroes, just always puts off a dangerous, disquieted vibe so it’s only fitting for him to play this guy we’re kind of not sure about until the third act revelations come along, he really nails it the whole way. Richardson, who tragically passed away a few years back, was always magnetic no matter what (I’ll always fondly remember her as Lindsay Logan’s mom in The Parent Trap), and the burgeoning love, compassion and curiosity to get to the truth is nicely cultivated by the actress. The legendary Clancy Brown shows up as well as a potential suspect, filmmakers tend to throw in his presence to ratchet intensity but he’s fairly relaxed here. Watch for an early career glimpse of Paul Giamatti too. This one doesn’t break new ground or go down in history as anything new, but as far as chiller thrillers go it ain’t half bad at all, and definitely benefits a bunch from having Hauer and Richardson on the frontline.

-Nate Hill

B Movie Glory: Quick

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Quick doesn’t quite live up to it’s title, and probably should have been called something contrary to that like “Slow” or “Take Your Time”. It’s technically an action thriller but it ambles along at a leisurely pace, one pearl in a strand of interchangeable 90’s B Movies that you’d never dream of actually watching unless you’re a serial cinephile like myself. Actually, there is one reason this one stands out and may be worth one’s time: Teri Polo. Mrs. Gaylord Focker from Meet The Fockers to most, she’s on an early career rush here as the titular assassin, a deadly femme fatale playing the cops and the mob against each other whilst simultaneously romancing a meek accountant (Martin Donovan) who knows too much about a powerful crime boss (the legendary Robert Davi in relaxation mode). Polo is probably one of the sexiest female protagonists I’ve seen in an action flick, exuding natural sex appeal, especially in a scene with Donovan that would get anyone hot and bothered. It’s too bad the film itself can’t keep up with her and arrives pretty limp. Not even the usually magnetic Davi can seem to rile up a pulse. The only other spark of life is Jeff Fahey as a psychotic corrupt cop who’s into violent kinky sex and probably should never have been given a badge. Tia Carrere isn’t bad either as his foxy partner. Not a terrible flick when you consider the cast and what they get to do, but at the end of the day it’s still essentially just polished up time filler junk.

-Nate Hill